President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy isn’t working. So said a parade of Afghanistan watchers during the flap over war commander General Stanley McChrystal’s firing. But what does that phrase, so often in the media these days, really mean? And if the strategy really isn’t working, just how can you tell? The answers to these questions raise even [...]
The Obama administration has awarded $220m (£146m) in new contracts to the military contractor formerly known as Blackwater to provide security in Afghanistan. This is despite accusations against the company of murder and indiscriminate killings of civilians in Iraq and investigations into alleged corruption and sanctions busting. The contracts have drawn stinging criticism in Congress [...]
State Department officials struggled to explain Monday why they have awarded a new $120 million contract to a private security firm that was kicked out of Iraq four months ago amid charges that its personnel gunned down unarmed civilians. Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, was awarded an 18-month contract to provide security at [...]
Over the past five years, the U.S. government has spent a combined $80 billion on contractors to support its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that has U.S. military leaders concerned: On Friday, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan suggested that the coalition had become too dependent on private contractors to carry out its mission there effectively. [...]
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The Justice Department’s inspector general is worried about the rising costs and delays of the FBI’s projected nearly half billion dollar project to modernize its case management system. The IG’s concerns about the progress of the Sentinel project – now estimated to cost more than $450 million and to be completed in 2011 – follow a recent [...]
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Also tagged Budget, Case Management, Computing, ECHELON, FBI, Intelligence, Lockheed Martin, Promis, Sentinel, Surveillance, Technology
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Philip Giraldi, on March 29th, 2010 at 6:42 am Said: The war economy runs on the Dick Cheney 1% principle – if there is a one per cent chance of something happening a massive security response is justified. Every single “threat” since 9/11 has been hyped unrealistically to require creation of a huge government infrastructure. [...]
It’s vital to understand how this really works: it isn’t that people like Mike McConnell move from public office to the private sector and back again. That implies more separation than really exists. At this point, it’s more accurate to view the U.S. Government and these huge industry interests as one gigantic, amalgamated, inseparable entity — [...]
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Also tagged Anonymity, Booz Allen, Corporatism, DNI, Intelligence, Internet, Michael McConnell, Mike McConnell, NSA, Privacy, Privatization, Surveillance, Wikileaks
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As a journalist, as well as a military veteran and former Iraq contractor, I try to keep abreast of the latest developments in America’s warfighting forces—public and private. Which is why I was unsurprised to find a new report this month by the DOD inspector general on KBR’s lazy Iraq contracting. But I was surprised when I found no [...]
There are now three armies in America: the regular volunteer force, the secret volunteer force — the folks at the Joint Special Operations Command — and the paramilitaries and contractors used by the CIA. Three armies, a welter of conflicting laws, domains and territories. The scariest part of the Ellen Nakashima’s story on Friday on how [...]
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Also tagged Accountability, CIA, Cyber Attacks, Cybersecurity, Cyberwar, DNI, DOD, Intelligence, Internet, JSOC, Law, Michael Furlong, Military, NSA, Oversight, Pentagon
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America has spent more than $6 billion since 2002 in an effort to create an effective Afghan police force, buying weapons, building police academies, and hiring defense contractors to train the recruits—but the program has been a disaster. More than $322 million worth of invoices for police training were approved even though the funds were [...]
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Also tagged Accountability, Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Audit, Blackwater, Department of State, DynCorp, Education, Military, Police, Poverty, Training, Xe Services
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Imagine, for a moment, if Pentagon officials, supposedly toiling in our name, actually condescended to ask us for our thoughts. What do we think about global military strategy, garrisoning the planet, the ways in which our forces are structured, and how, where, and for what they should be deployed abroad? Sound crazy? Here in the U.S.A. [...]
Filed in Essays, News Blurbs
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, DOD, Economy, Homeless, Homeless Veterans, Homelessness, Housing, Iraq War, Jobs, Military, Military Spending, Pentagon, Poverty, Unemployment, VA, Veterans, Veterans Administration
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Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The legal issues can’t really be fully assessed without much more information than has been reported so far, but I see three separate problems—in ascending order of significance: Appropriated funds. Specific rules govern the use of congressionally appropriated funds, requiring the money to be used for the purpose for which it was in fact approved. [...]
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Also tagged Assassinations, CIA, Civilians, Courts, Detainees, Donald Rumsfeld, Geneva Conventions, Law, Laws of War, Military, Military Tribunals, Predator Drones, Propaganda
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The Times report, written by Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti, has the character of a controlled release of information for the purpose of containing the damage to US covert operations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. It is not only the US military and intelligence agencies that are being protected, but the Times itself. According to the [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, American Security Corporation, Assassinations, Black Ops, CIA, Corporatism, Covert Ops, David Rohde, Eason Jordan, Espionage, Intelligence, International Media Ventures, Iran-Contra, Michael Furlong, Mike Taylor, Military, Oliver North, Pentagon, Robert Pelton, Special Operations
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The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Al Qaeda, Balkans, CIA, DOD, Intelligence, Iran-Contra, Iraq War, Michael Furlong, Pakistan, Pentagon, Psyops, Taliban
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In our current armed conflicts, there are two U.S. drone offensives. One is conducted by our armed forces, the other by the CIA. Every day, CIA agents and CIA contractors arm and pilot armed unmanned drones over combat zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Pakistani tribal areas, to search out and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda [...]
The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has issued a strong warning to the Defense Department over plans to award $1 billion in new contracts to the firm formerly known as Blackwater, accusing managers of the private security company of lying to win lucrative jobs in Afghanistan. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) also cited a history [...]
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
For anyone who has a security clearance and doesn’t believe the U.S. faces a cyber-espionage crisis, Colonel Steven Shirley has 102 stories to share with you. That’s the number of cases in which Shirley’s team of Pentagon researchers discovered cyberspies breaching the networks of government agencies, defense contractors and other organizations with ties to the [...]
Filed in News Blurbs, Technology
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Also tagged Cyber Attacks, Cybersecurity, DOD, Espionage, Hackers, Hacking, Intelligence, Pentagon, Secrets, Spying, Think Tanks, Universities
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Wow, the corruption is/was worse than even my imagination is capable of thinking up… and the DoJ isn’t taking action? WTF? The former employees who filed the lawsuit, a married couple named Brad and Melan Davis, said there was little financial oversight of the money. Last year, an audit by the special inspector general for [...]
Saturday, January 23, 2010
In Baghdad, Vice President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. will appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater guards involved in a 2007 Baghdad shooting that killed 17 people including women and children. (Jan. 23) via YouTube – Associated Press – Biden: U.S. to Appeal Blackwater Dismissal. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amGSJuwszC8[/youtube]
Thursday, January 21, 2010
In an interview with the Pakistani TV station Express TV, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that the private security firms Blackwater and DynCorp are operating inside Pakistan. “They’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” Gates said, according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting [...]
Three private security guards working for Blackwater Worldwide who witnessed a 2007 episode in Baghdad in which at least 17 Iraqi civilians were killed by other Blackwater guards told a federal grand jury that they believed the shootings were unjustified, according to newly unsealed court documents. Two senior United States military officers who arrived at [...]
Still, the government has failed to hold armed contractors accountable. When its formal occupation of Iraq ended in 2004, the Bush administration demanded that Baghdad grant legal immunity to private contractors. Congress has tried to cover such crimes with American law. The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act extends civilian law to contractors supporting military operations overseas, [...]
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Also tagged Abu Ghraib, Accountability, Blackwater, Congress, Crime, ICC, Iraq War, Law, MEJA, Mercenaries, PMCs, Privatization, UCMJ, War Crimes
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Several victims of a 2007 shooting involving American private security guards employed by the firm formerly known as Blackwater alleged Sunday that they were coerced into reaching settlements, and they demanded that the Iraqi government intervene to have the agreements nullified. The Iraqis said they were pressured by their own attorneys into accepting what they [...]
A judge in America threw out charges against members of the Blackwater security company yesterday who were accused of killing Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in one of the most notorious incidents since the 2003 invasion. The ruling will be met with anger in Iraq, where feelings ran high at the time. Fourteen to 17 people [...]
Saturday, December 19, 2009
There are many reasons for the progressive division on the health care bill. There are differences over the narrow question of health care policy, with some believing the bill does more harm than good just on that ground alone. Some of it has to do with broader questions of political power: if progressives always announce that [...]
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Also tagged Barack Obama, Corporatism, Democrats, DLC, Glenn Greenwald, Intelligence, Lobbyists, Policy, Progressives, Surveillance, Triangulation
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